GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is call­ing for more po­lice pa­trols at schools which are deemed high risk.

TTUTA’s pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed calls by UNC Sen­a­tor David Nakhid for a greater po­lice pres­ence at such schools. He agreed that more pa­trols are need­ed to curb vi­o­lence at high-risk schools and al­so called for a sta­t­ic po­lice pres­ence to stamp out un­to­ward be­hav­iour.

“Through­out our na­tion’s schools we are of the be­lief that there should be the pres­ence of law en­force­ment of­fi­cers out­side the call of school and at the end of schools,” he said.

“We would al­ways like to see an in­crease in of­fi­cers and not just pa­trols. We would like the sta­t­ic pres­ence of of­fi­cers at those high-risk schools. We have iden­ti­fied hotspots but more and more there are oth­er com­mu­ni­ties who are be­ing af­fect­ed and the pres­ence of these of­fi­cers can be a de­ter­rent and curb some of the in­ci­dents that oc­cur out­side of the schools.”

Lum Kin al­so called for more guid­ance coun­sel­lors at schools, adding that “psy­cho­log­i­cal coun­sel­lors “ are need­ed to get to the heart of the is­sues.

“The en­tire Stu­dent Sup­port Di­vi­sion is un­der­staffed and un­der-re­sourced and at every junc­ture TTUTA would high­light­ed the need for the di­vi­sion to be more re­sourced.

“The coun­sel­lors who we have are ba­si­cal­ly guid­ance coun­sel­lors. We need those who can in­ter­vene psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly to ac­tu­al­ly get down to the nit­ty-grit­ty of things,” Lum Kin said.

He said these mea­sures should not be the on­ly in­ter­ven­tions to tack­le vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline as there needs to be “an en­tire” coun­try­wide ap­proach to deal with this prob­lem.

“It should not just be Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty or the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion be­cause this goes even deep­er. We are treat­ing with symp­toms of some­thing that is plagu­ing the na­tion and we need to find out the root caus­es to treat with it,” he said.

“It is not go­ing to be easy and it is not go­ing to be in­stan­ta­neous”

Lum Kin added that once the right ef­fort is in place, pos­i­tive changes can be made.